Tipping - the great debate

applecruncher said:
Re: restaurant servers in Alabama
This means that Alabama employers can pay as little as $2.13 an hour, as long as the employee earns enough in tips to add up to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. However, if you don't earn at least $5.12 an hour in tips, your employer must pay you the difference.

The average server in Alabama earns $10.81/hr.
https://www.indeed.com/salaries/Server-Salaries,-Alabama

In Ohio:

Ohio allows employers to take a tip credit of 50%. This means employers may pay employees as little as $4.15 an hour for 2018, as long as the employees earn enough in tips to bring their total hourly wage up to at least the state minimum.

In Caifornia:

California treats its servers differently than most states in the Union: it is one of seven states that pays tipped employees the state minimum wage, $9 per hour, instead of the absurdly low federal minimum of $2.13 for tipped employees. ...Tipped employees' hourly minimum would be required to remain at $9.
Click to expand...

Thanks for posting this.

I found out that the average server at my favorite eating out place, Cracker Barrel, makes $18,791 a year. That's about enough to barely survive if you are a single person living at home in your parents basement. But since most houses here don't have basements I guess you're screwed.


 

Tipping in the US is THE biggest scam most likely started by restaurant owners as they are the ones who keep more money in their pockets while customers/diners pay generously to their employees to do their job.

I'm a decent tipper most of the time, but I don't reward bad service.
 
What an interesting thread!

Of course, if there was no tipping the average total cost of a meal would still be the same, as would the average total income of servers. No investor is going to risk investment in a business if they don't believe they can get at least a reasonable return. And in these times of high employment, no employee is going to take/stay with a job if they don't believe the compensation is worth the effort required and there are better options.

I've seen too many people scrape together everything they could to start a restaurant, work their hearts out, appear to do everything right, and then end up beaten and bankrupt. On the other hand, my sister is a life-long career waitress and has no complaints. She could have chosen many other more lucrative career paths, but she loves her job and does it very well.

For the record, I normally tip 20% (rounded up) and more for breakfast. If the service is particularly poor, I tip less or (rarely) not at all. I also tip barbers, hotel staff, and taxi drivers, but rarely anyone else.
 

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oldman, you and me both. My mother was a widow w/3 kids, no business skills, and worked two waitressing jobs 5 days a week to support us. My spouse worked as a waiter going through culinary school; if it weren't for tips he was earning $1.85/hr when minimum wage was $5.75.

Waiters/waitresses are paid on a different scale than standard minimum wages. And the IRS ASSUMES people tip, so they are taxed between 8-21% on their income, even if ten percent of the customers stiff them or leave 5-10% tips.

We tip well unless service is below par. Small business jobs are the true lifeblood of a community, and that money going through the local economy has been proven to generate genuine results that benefit all of us.
 
I know that many of our flight attendants (F/A) have been offered tips. United forbids their F/A's from receiving a tip, unless the customer demands that they accept it. As a pilot, I have also been offered tips. On one trip, I was flying from Las Vegas to New York and one of the passengers made the comment that he had a very lucrative trip. He offered me a $100.00 bill upon his departure from the plane, but I refused it. He was surprised and asked me how much did I earn per hour. I politely told him that we were not permitted to discuss salaries.
 

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